informal economy toolkit 1
TRANSCRIPT
AAPS Planning Education Toolkit: The Informal Economy
By Caroline Skinner WIEGO Urban Policies Programme Director
African Centre for Cities (ACC) Senior Researcher
University of Cape Town
South Africa
July 2011
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1. Introduction: Why is the informal economy an important
theme for planning education? Small-scale shops (spazas), trading goods from street corners, market trading, car guarding, small
scale tailoring, waste collecting, among a myriad of informal activities, is what characterises most
cities of the South. In developing countries informal employment is estimated to comprise one half
to three quarters of non agricultural employment (International Labour Organisation 2002:7)1. Table
1 below contains regional breakdowns for these statistics.
Table 1: Size of the Informal Economy
Region Non Agricultural Employment - % Informal
North Africa 48%
Sub Saharan Africa 72%
Latin America 51%
Asia 65%
(Source: International Labour Organisation, 2002)
The ILO points out that if South Africa is excluded from the sub Saharan figures, the share of informal
employment in non-agricultural employment rises to 78% in sub-Saharan Africa. These figures
suggest that there are substantial regional variations within the continent but that even where the
informal economy is relatively small – in North Africa – nearly 1 in every 2 people working outside of
agriculture, works in the informal economy.
Figure 1 below draws from figures released by the International Labour Organisation in June 2011
reflecting the latest available estimates for the size informal economy for a range of African
countries. These do suggest again that there is variation but the average for these countries is 57%
of the non-agricultural employment is in the informal economy.
Figure 1: Informal Economy – Percentage of Non Agricultural Employment
(Source: Drawn from International Labour Organisation 2011)
1 The ILO, in collaboration with the international research and policy network Women in Informal Employment:
Globalising and Organising is currently updating these figures. A new publication reflecting the latest facts
and figures on informal employment will be available by the end of 2011. See www.wiego.org for updates.
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Due to the way national statistical agencies collect labour force survey data, city level labour market
estimates are rare. The French research institute DIAL however constructed city level estimates for
eight African cities – see table 2 below.
Table 2: Informal employment as percentage of non-agricultural employment in a selection of
African cities
Cities Total Women Men
Antananarivo (Madagascar) 63.0 67.1 59.5
Niamey (Niger) 76.2 83.4 71.9
Abidjan (Ivory Coast) 79.0 89.7 69.8
Dakar (Senegal) 79.8 88.0 73.9
Ouagadougou (Burkino Faso) 80.2 86.9 75.4
Cotonou (Benin) 81.2 89.3 72.1
Bamako (Mali) 82.1 91.1 74.9
Lomé (Togo) 83.1 90.3 75.1
Average 78.1 85.7 71.6
(Source: Herrera et al. 2011:15)
In these cities, nearly 8 in every 10 people who are working, work in the informal economy. The
table also suggests that women are disproportionally employed in the informal economy; a
relationship that is confirmed by Sethuraman’s extensive review of global evidence (1998). There is
a well established correlation between income in the hands of women and poverty alleviation
(Chant 2010).
Although the individual incomes of informal workers are often low, cumulatively their activities
contribute significantly to national gross domestic products (GDPs) globally. The International Labour
Organisation (2002:24) has compiled data on the contribution of informal enterprises to national
GDPs in sixteen Sub-Saharan countries. The contributions varied from 58% in Ghana to 24% in
Zambia. On average, the informal sector contributed 41% to GDP. These figures show that the
informal economy is not only playing an important employment generation and poverty alleviation
role, but is also critical to local economies.
There is also evidence that African informal economies have been growing. In 2001, Chen estimated
that 93% of new jobs on the African continent were in the informal economy (2001:268). However,
much of the data currently available predates the post-2008 global economic crisis. Small-scale
studies have shown that the crisis forced new entrants into informal labour markets, but also
generated job losses within the informal economy. Existing operators in the informal economy faced
greater economic pressures because of the crisis (Brown 2010; Horn 2009, 2011).
These statistics demonstrate that informal work, rather than being the exception, is the dominant
mode of work in African towns and cities. These activities not only generate employment but also
sustain poorer households. Furthermore, although individual incomes are low, cumulatively these
activities contribute significantly to gross domestic products globally. Planners can and have played a
crucial role in both helping and hindering the livelihood activities of the working poor, and
developing creative means of supporting these activities is an important challenge to local
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authorities and planners across the continent. As Beall et al. (2002:8) posit, ‘incorporating and
managing, rather than controlling and marginalising, the unregulated economies of the poor is an
imperative of 21st Century governance’. Given the size and significance of the informal economy, a
critical analysis of its actually existing nature, the role it plays in development, and how planning has
and could respond, should be a central theme in contemporary planning education.
There is increasing acknowledgement in planning policy circles that the informal economy is an issue
warranting critical attention. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in the Foreword to 2009 Global
Report on Human Settlements, identifies the growth of the informal sector as one of the three major
urban challenges of the 21st Century (UN Habitat 2009, Foreword). At the time of the report’s
publication Anna Tibaijuka, the Executive Director of UN Habitat, called on planning schools to
‘embrace innovative planning ideas, including the ability to engage in participatory planning,
negotiation and communication, understanding the implications of rapid urbanization and urban
informality, and the ability to bring climate change considerations into planning concerns’ (UN
Habitat, 2009:viii). In fact, this landmark report dedicates a whole chapter to the subject of urban
informality.
A number of planning theorists have also identified informality as one of the key contemporary
challenges faced by planners. Vanessa Watson, for example, notes,
Finding a way in which planning can work with informality, supporting survival efforts of the
urban poor rather than hindering them ... is essential if [planning] is to play a role at all in
these new urban conditions (2009b:2268, emphasis added).
Ananya Roy (2005:155) however points out ‘engagement with informality is in many ways difficult
for planners. Informal spaces seem to be the exception to planning, lying outside of its realm of
control’.
Through the readings, course exercises and assignments provided here, this toolkit aims to equip
students with the conceptual and practical tools to respond creatively to the complex issues
associated with urban informal economies across the African continent.
1.1. Course aims and suggested assessment methods
This toolkit provides a basis for the development of an educational course that includes an overview
of theoretical debates and empirical evidence relating to informal economies. More specifically, it
aims to strengthen a participant’s ability to:
• grapple with contending theoretical perspectives;
• critically evaluate empirical evidence;
• debate and present arguments;
• conduct qualitative research;
• critique policy but also develop policy and planning frameworks.
The course design presented here assumes that students have access to the core readings and have
actively engaged with them before class sessions. The course is intended for postgraduate students
and, as suggested here, may be taught through 10 seminar sessions of between 2 and 2.5 hours
each.
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Planning students based on the African continent are in a unique position to engage directly with
those working in the informal economy. For the main assessment task, students should select one
activity or sector in the informal economy (e.g. fresh produce trade in a local market, the trading of
plastic goods at traffic intersections, small-scale clothing manufacture at home, car guarding at a
local shopping centre, taxi driving, small-scale construction work, collecting waste for recycling).
They should do a literature search on the activity but also conduct four or more key informant
interviews, the majority of which should be with informal economy workers themselves. Students
should be encouraged to select their particular domain of informal activity early on in the course so
that they can use seminar sessions to reflect on the ongoing development of their case study. For
their final assessment task, students will use their case study material to reflect on the debates and
issues raised in the core seminars, and should demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of the
literature. The final assessment piece should conclude with a set of recommendations for planning
interventions2.
2. Perspectives, theories and debates
2.1. What is the informal sector / economy?
Keith Hart coined the phrase ‘informal sector’ in the early 1970’s to describe the range of
subsistence activities of the urban poor in Ghana. These activities have of course been around for
decades, even centuries, before this. There is much discussion in the literature about the term and
its use value (see for example Bromley 1978; Peattie 1987). As Castells and Portes (1989:12) note,
although the main writings on the informal sector differ markedly in terms of the criteria used to
define the ‘informal sector’, as well as the relative weighting of these different criteria, all definitions
have certain features in common: they assume informal economic activities to be small-scale and
elusive of governmental requirements such as registration, tax and social security obligations, and
health and safety rules.
The International Conference of Labour Statisticians sets international norms for national statistical
agencies. In 1993, there was a resolution on the definition of the informal sector. This definition
includes the self-employed and employers (as long as the establishment employs below a certain
number of employees) that are not registered under specific forms of national legislation. In recent
years, there has been a trend away from this enterprise-based definition of informal activities to an
employment-based definition (see Hussmanns 2004 for a full details). The latter focuses on the
characteristics of a person’s job, rather than the enterprise that employs her or him. This job-based
definition allows a conceptual grouping of all those who are not in a formal employment relationship
and who generally suffer from inadequate social protection, a lack of rights at work, poor working
conditions and/or insufficient incomes, regardless of whether they are employed by a formal
institution, an informal enterprise or a household. Many national statistical agencies have reported
2 This toolkit draws on a dedicated course on the informal economy that was taught in the Masters in
Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa between 2002 and 2008. Over
the six years the course was offered, this assessment approach proved to be a very valuable learning
experience, generating vibrant debate and new empirical insights.
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on both the size of the informal sector and the size of the informal economy3. The available African
data suggests that most people working in the informal economy are, in fact, working in informal
enterprises (Herrera et al. 2011; International Labour Organisation 2002; 2011).
Although many authors use data generated by national statistical agencies and thus adhere to the
definitional approaches outlined above, students should be aware of the particular definitions
adopted by individual authors, in order to ensure that cited statistics are comparable. For example,
Schneider’s statistics are often cited. His notion of the informal or ‘shadow’ economy includes
criminal activities, which often generates inflated figures (see for example Schneider 2002;
Schneider et al. 2003).
Much of the planning literature addresses the issue of ‘informality’ more broadly, referring not only
to forms of income generation but also modes of settlement, housing and general modes of
negotiating life in the city4 (Watson 2009a:157). Ananya Roy (2009a:8) talks about informality as a
‘mode of production of space defined by the territorial logic of deregulation’, in other words, as a
highly spatialised mode of governmental practice that establishes which places and bodies lie in a
space of exception, ambiguity and often repression. This toolkit however specifically addresses the
issue of the informal economy.
2.2. Early debates – The informal sector’s role in development
Prior to Keith Hart’s (1973) distinction between formal and informal economic sectors, the
conceptual dichotomy of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ was commonly used to understand the
functioning of African urban economies. ‘Traditional’ activities were perceived as existing before and
continuing in the face of western capital penetration. Marxists propounded the idea of the ‘reserve
army’ consisting of the unemployed and petty commodity producers waiting to fit into the grand
scheme of capitalist production. Lewis (1954) drew on the concept of ‘surplus labour’, outlining how
this residual would facilitate the transition of African economies from agricultural to industrial, and
rural to urban, in different ways. Both theories predicted that the extent of petty commodity
production and trade would wane as national and urban development proceeded.
Keith Hart, an anthropologist by training, first coined the phrase ‘informal sector’ in a seminal article
published in 1973. Here he asked whether the ‘reserve army of urban unemployed and
underemployed really constitute a passive, exploited majority in cities like Accra, or do their informal
activities possess some autonomous capacity for generating growth in the incomes of the urban (and
rural) poor?’ He concludes with an essentially positive view. This article remains a ‘must read’ for
any researcher or educator concerned with the informal economy. Many of the issues he raises are
still actively debated today – such as the links between the informal economy and migration,
women’s participation in the informal economy, the role of social networks in facilitating informal
work, links between the formal and informal economies, as well as problems relating to the
generation of employment and gross domestic product data.
3 A note on terminology: statisticians use the term ‘informal sector’ to refer to informal enterprises and
‘informal economy’ to refer to informal employment in both informal and formal enterprises. 4 This is particularly associated with the work of AbdouMaliq Simone. See for example Simone, A. 2001.
"Straddling the Divides: Remaking Associational Life in the Informal African City." International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 25(1).
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The International Labour Organisation (1972) popularised the notion that unemployment was not
simply a cyclical phenomenon but chronic and intractable, thereby increasing the focus on
employment as a policy objective in its own right. The ‘working poor’ became a focus of analytical
and policy-making attention. The ILO report marked an important shift in thinking, from regarding
the ‘traditional economy’ as stagnant and unproductive, to seeing it as providing a wide range of
low-cost, labour intensive and market competitive goods and services. By adopting the term
‘informal sector’, the ILO allowed for a way of describing the structure of the informal economy as a
whole, in the terminology of economic planners. The informal sector increasingly became seen as
the solution to the low employment levels attending developing countries. Governments were
therefore encouraged to intervene in the dynamic elements of the informal sector.
In the late 1970’s, critics (especially Bromley 1978; Gerry 1978; Moser 1978) argued that this was an
overly optimistic view of the informal economy; that the informal economy was constrained by
structural factors, particularly the exploitative relationship with the formal economy. Bromley
(1978:1036), commenting on the speed at which the term ‘informal sector’ was adopted by the ILO
and other international development institutes, argued that the notion ‘offered the possibility of
“helping the poor without any major threat to the rich”, a potential compromise between pressures
for the redistribution of income and wealth and the desire for stability on the part of the economic
and political elite’.
Drawing on Marxist structural theory, Moser (1978) expanded Bromley’s critique in the same edition
of the journal World Development. She challenged the notion of a two-sector dualism used by the
ILO and others, pointing instead to the existence of a continuum of productive activities in the cities
of developing countries entailing ‘complex linkages and dependent relations between production
and distribution systems’ (1978:1055). She drew upon Marx’s theory of different modes of
production and their mutual articulation, adapting his notion of petty commodity production. She
argued that the petty commodity sector should be understood ‘as part of the capitalist mode of
production with its development controlled by, and linked to, the capitalist mode’ (1978:1057). In
this view, petty commodity production plays a number of important roles within the capitalist mode
of production, such as maintaining low levels of subsistence and the low cost of labour reproduction.
Moser (1978:1061) thus asserts that ‘the “political dimension” of development planning can no
longer be ignored’. The policy-making implications of her critique are fairly bleak. Although
recognising the need for grassroots interventions in poor urban areas, she reminds us that the
‘function’ of these measures ‘is no more than to alleviate some of the worst anomalies not to
change the overall structure’, which she argues is essentially exploitative.
Despite the fact that the term ‘informal sector’ initially stemmed from an analysis of African urban
economies, ensuing theoretical debates tended to draw on empirical experiences from Latin
America (Castells and Portes 1989; De Soto 1989; MacEwen-Scott 1979). The Peruvian economist
Hernando De Soto continues to be very influential in policy circles and his research institute Instituto
Libertad y Democracia (ILD) has produced commissioned policy reports for a number of African
governments. During the 1980’s his work primarily focused on Peru and other Latin American
contexts. In The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism, De Soto drew on the findings of an
ILD project where researchers, posing as a range of informal operators, negotiated their way
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through state bureaucratic procedures and, in the process, demonstrated the immense institutional
obstacles facing the upliftment of the poor. They found, for example, that someone wishing to open
a small store legally must comply with bureaucratic procedures involving three different government
departments; a process typically taking 43 days and costing $590, fifteen times the monthly
minimum wage (1989:143). De Soto concluded that legal institutions have ceased to provide
adequate means to govern society, stating, ‘the existing legal system – the red tape, the widespread
mistreatment on waiting lines, the bribes, the rudeness – are a Kafkaesque trap which prevent (the
informals) and the country’s resources from being used efficiently’ (1989:243). If the
‘entrepreneurial spirit’ of informal operators were to be ‘legalised and nurtured rather than fettered
and suppressed … a burst of competitive energy would be released, living standards would start
rising’ (1989:15). He further argued that developing countries would be in a stronger position to deal
with global trade imbalances and their debt burden.
In retrospect, the literature of the 1970’s and 1980’s has been categorised into two broad traditions
(see Moser 1994; Rakowski 1994 for reviews). On the left of the spectrum is the structuralist
position, from which informality is seen as a crisis of capitalist development, demonstrating the
inability of capitalism to absorb the mass of unemployed, with research often detailing the
exploitative relationship between the formal and informal economies (Moser [1978] and Castells
and Portes [1989] broadly fall into this category). On the right, the neo-liberal position adopts a
celebratory view of informality, seeing it as a process of deregulation ‘from below’. From this
perspective, the relationship between formal and informal economies is either unconsidered or
assumed to be benign (De Soto’s and the World Bank’s positions broadly fall into this tradition).
Drawing on a substantial body of empirical evidence, Kate Meagher (1995) reviewed and nuanced
these debates whilst critically locating them in an African context. Generally, Meagher argues that
understanding informal economic dynamics in relation to developments in the formal sector is
important. She focuses on differentiation, subcontracting and supply linkages with the formal sector
and the role of the state in informal sector expansion, before turning her attention to the role of the
market, the state and political alliances in determining the character and potential of the informal
economy in the African context (Potts [2008] also provides a useful review, with reference to a sub
Saharan African context).
The ‘informal economy’ debates of the 1970’s and 1980’s reflected tensions within broader
economic development debates over the appropriate role of the market and the state. Recent
debates are less explicitly polarized but these underlying tensions remain. The themes raised in this
earlier period – the role of the state in producing informality and/or helping or hindering livelihoods
(and the related issues of overregulation versus underregulation), the relationship between the
formal and informal economies, and the role of social networks – also persist in contemporary
literatures. More recent debates in these areas will be considered later, focusing on tools of analysis
deemed to be useful to planners. However, before doing so, the issue of differentiation within the
informal economy warrants some attention.
2.3. Differentiation within the informal economy
It is important to note that authors broadly subscribing to the different traditions described above
tended to concentrate on different segments within the informal economy. Those writing from a
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neoliberal perspective tend to focus on operators with relatively stable livelihoods, often male
entrepreneurs5. Those with a more structuralist perspective tend to draw on case material of
survivalist activities in the service and manufacturing sectors. This is indicative of the diversity of
activities and actors within the global informal economy. As Castells and Portes (1989:11) note,
The informal economy simultaneously encompasses flexibility and exploitation, productivity
and abuse, aggressive entrepreneurs and defenseless workers, libertarianism and
greediness.
This diversity is in part what makes the informal economy such a challenging policy and planning
issue. Given improvements in data gathering on informal work, it is possible to identify segments
within the informal economy that assist in analysis of this phenomenon.
Chen (2007:78-9) has interrogated the two broad conceptual categories of informal enterprises and
informal jobs, identifying sub-segments within each: Self employment in informal enterprises
(including employers, own account operators and unpaid family workers) and wage employment in
informal jobs (including employees of informal enterprises and other informal wage workers – casual
or day labourers, domestic workers, etc. – and industrial outworkers). Drawing on research findings
and official data, she has portrayed these segments graphically as a pyramid (see Figure 2),
indicating the existence of an inverse relationship between the number of participants and average
wage earnings in each segment of informal work. Although regional differences pertain, the global
trend is that informal employers, while relatively few in number, enjoy the highest average earnings
and are predominantly men. On the other hand, industrial outworkers or homeworkers generally
earn the least of all informal workers. Lower wage categories tend to be populated by women.
Figure 2: Segmentation within the informal economy
Average Earnings Segmentation by Sex
High
Informal
Employers Predominantly Men
Informal
Employees
Own Account Operators Men and Women
Casual Wage Workers
Industrial Outworkers/Homeworkers Predominantly
Low Women
Source: Chen (2007:79).
5 Those subscribing to the more celebratory view of informality like DeSoto have been critiqued for seeing the
informal economy as an undifferentiated group of entrepreneurs.
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Chen thus draws attention to the gender dynamics affecting these activities (a long-standing theme
in the literature), as well as the existence of a continuum from survivalist to more profitable
entrepreneurial activities.
Another way of ‘segmenting’ the informal economy is by the industry. Table 3, below, draws on data
for eight African cities presented by Herrera et al. (2011). The data were collected at different times
and thus are not directly comparable in a strict methodological sense. However, the same
methodology and similar questionnaires were used for each city6, so the data does provide a strong
indication of general urban trends.
Table 3 shows that segmentation by industry varies from one city to the next. In Bamako (Mali),
nearly half of all those working informally are traders, while in Niamey (Niger) a far smaller
percentage works in trade, but just over one in every four informal workers are involved in
manufacturing activities. Lomé (Togo) hosts a large number of street traders; comparatively few
operate in Dakar (Senegal) and Niamey. In Cotonou (Benin), one in four informal operators work
from home, a far greater proportion than that of Abidjan (Ivory Coast), where only one in every ten
informal operators are home-based.
Table 3: Percentage of informal employment by industry in eight African cities
Abi-
jan
Antan
anari
vo
Bama
ko
Cot-
onou
Dakar Lome Niam
ey
Ouag
adou
gou
Ave-
rage
Informal employment (non-agricultural) 98.4 92.2 96.7 97.6 96.8 97.5 93.9 93.9 95.9
Informal traders 40.5 33.5 48.3 43.8 32.1 44.6 31.9 42.9 39.7
…of which: street traders 16.0 15.3 19.9 18.8 13.0 24.0 13.5 16.7 17.1
Informal non-trade services 38.8 36.4 27.6 35.3 35.5 32.2 30.4 25.5 32.7
…of which: Informal transportation 7.5 4.9 4.5 6.8 6.0 8.1 5.9 2.7 5.8
…of which: Wastepickers/informal
recycling 0.1 n/a 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.2
Informal Construction 3.6 5.8 6.8 4.0 8.7 4.4 3.9 7.0 5.5
Informal Manufacturing 15.6 16.7 14.0 14.4 20.3 16.3 26.4 18.2 17.7
Home-based informal workers** 10.6 18.0 16.5 24.7 15.2 18.4 19.8 14.9 17.3
**This category is not based on the industry classification but cuts across the industry categories. It refers to
non-agricultural workers who designated their home as their place of work.
Figure 3 presents the average involvement in informal industrial activities amongst these eight cities.
On average, four in every ten people working informally are involved in trade; nearly half of these
operate from the street. The next most significant segment is non-trade services, with 18% of
workers being involved in transportation. Only a very small proportion of these workers reported
their occupation as waste picking7. Nearly one in five of all those working informally are involved in
6 This data draws from three surveys one of which is a representative labour force survey. International
industry code norms are used (see Herrera et al [2011:13-14] for more details). Course facilitators should be
encouraged to see if similar data is available from their national statistical agencies for their country. 7 As is outlined in the sector profiles, given the mobile nature of this occupation, this is a particularly difficult
worker group to gather data on and there is likely to be undercounting in this segment.
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manufacturing. Herrerra et al. (2011) also had access to data on places of work – approximately one
in every five informal workers are based at home.
Figure 3: Informal employment industry, averages for eight African cities
Sensitising our understanding of informal economies by recognising industrial and workplace
segmentation helps us to unpack how planning interventions and/or regulations might assist or
hinder these livelihood activities. Each category of activity has different economic pressures and
everyday spatial requirements. For street traders, securing access to public spaces with high degrees
of ‘footfall’, such as transport interchanges, is an economic imperative. For home-based workers, on
the other hand, the availability of basic infrastructure services (water, sanitation and shelter) at their
place of work and shelter is critical. Informal transportation workers require access to well-travelled
routes, thus the availability and regulation of road infrastructure is highly important.
The three worker-group livelihood profiles provided with this toolkit (Appendix A) collate the latest
data on street traders, home-based workers and waste pickers. This information was drafted by
sector specialists working for the global research and policy network Women in Informal
Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO). It draws on statistical analyses and other
academic sources, as well as ongoing engagements with worker organisations. Read together, the
data profiles signify the highly divergent experiences and demands emanating from different worker
groups.
Understanding the levels of differentiation within the informal economy is the cornerstone of good
academic analysis and the development of creative and progressive planning responses to urban
livelihoods issues. Actual forms and modes of differentiation will be context-specific, but the kinds of
categories introduced in this section should assist with the development of more nuanced
perspectives of African urban life and practice.
2.4. The role of the state and planning in the informal economy
The role of the state and planning in the informal economy is a highly contested subject. On one
end of the spectrum, De Soto’s view of informal activity being a ‘people’s response’ to state
overregulation is still pervasive. He continues to advocate for reducing the poor’s bureaucratic
burden through deregulation, although in his more recent work (2000), he does argue for an
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extension of property rights, so that informal entrepreneurs can convert their informal assets into
real capital assets.
The World Bank has adopted a variant on this position. A World Bank team (Perry et al. 2007) has
posited that previous attempts to understand informal economic dynamics have entailed an
overemphasis on exclusion. They use the notion of ‘exit’ as a second lens through which to view
informality. They explain,
Many workers, firms, and families choose their optimal level of engagement with the
mandates and institutions of the state, depending on their valuation of the net benefits
associated with formality and the state’s enforcement effort and capability. That is, they
make implicit cost–benefit analyses about whether to cross the relevant margin into
formality, and frequently decide against it. This view suggests that high informality results
from a massive opting out of formal institutions by firms and individuals, and implies a blunt
societal indictment of the quality of the state’s service provision and its enforcement
capability (Perry et al. 2007:2).
Maloney (2004), who was a key part of the World Bank drafting team, had previously used data from
Latin America to demonstrate that many of those working informally do so voluntarily. However,
close scrutiny of his data shows that these voluntary informal workers are predominantly
entrepreneurs, located in the upper echelons of Chen’s pyramid (see Figure 2). According to the
World Bank position, policy-making should generally aim to shift modes of informal worker cost-
benefit analysis ‘toward engagement with the institutions of the state—both through improving the
benefits of being formal and through better monitoring’.
The alternative view on the relationship between the state and the informal economy is that the
state is complicit in producing and sustaining the informal economy. Meagher (1995:277) explains
this position as follows:
Ambiguous or inconsistent policy and policy that is difficult to enforce, represent an implicit
encouragement of informalisation. It creates a climate suitable for the expansion of
exploitative structures of informality, since it fails to provide active protection and support
for informal actors and provides gaps in the legal structure permitting stronger economic
players to make use of informal labour.
In terms of policy-making, this means the state should have a responsibility to regulate the
imbalance of power within the market or, more specifically, the unequal relationship between ‘big
business’ and informal enterprises or informal workers.
Portes, Castells and Bentons (1989: 302-7) have added a further dimension to this debate. Analysing
what they describe as ‘informal economies of growth’, they point out that the state has in fact
played a very active and positive role in the promotion of such growth. They cite the cases of Italy’s
Emilia Romagna, the Cuban small-scale economy in Miami, as well as Hong Kong. They note, ‘every
successful instance [of informal economic growth] registers evidence of an official attitude that
downplays the lack of observance of certain rules and actively supports the growth of
entrepreneurial ventures through training programmes, credit facilities, marketing assistance, and
similar policies’ (1989:303). They further recognise that, generally speaking, support emanating from
national government policy offers less potential for informal growth than the local actions of
regional government offices or municipal authorities.
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A parallel debate over the role of the state in informal economic processes has been played out in
recent planning literature8. Ananya Roy (2009:10), in an analysis of the Indian context, argues that
planning cannot solve the crisis of Indian urbanisation since ‘planning itself is implicated in the very
production of this crisis’. She continues,
Informality then is not a set of unregulated activities that lies beyond the reach of planning;
rather it is planning that inscribes the informal by designating some activities as authorized
and others as unauthorized.
This view is echoed in Oren Yiftachel’s (2009:88) analysis of the political geography of informality.
He posits the notion of ‘gray spaces’ positioned between the ‘whiteness’ of legality/approval/safety,
and the ‘blackness’ of eviction/destruction/death. He goes onto argue that planning is always
deeply implicated in ‘whitening’ (condoning, approving) and ‘blackening’ (criminalizing, destroying)
different types of informality. Yiftachel states bluntly that the ‘informality of the powerful’ is often
authorised by the state whilst alternative forms of informality remain indefinitely gray or are
officially ‘blackened’.
Urban planning – that is, the combination of relevant spatial policies – is often behind both
the existence and criminalization of gray space. Urban plans design the city’s ‘white’ spaces
which usually create little or no opening for inclusion/recognition of most informal localities
and population, while their discourse continuously condemns them as a chaotic danger to
the city (2009:94).
Roy pushes this point further, arguing that ‘informal spaces’ are produced by the state, and that ‘to
deal with informality therefore partly means confronting how the apparatus of planning produces
the unplanned and unplannable’ (2005:156).
Wilson (1991) echoes these sentiments pointing out that historically, even the most benevolent
projects and traditions of state planning have emphasized control and confinement. Although she
stops short of advocating the abandonment of planning, she argues,
There is a sense in which all town planning contains both a utopian and a heroic, yet
authoritarian, element. Although its purpose may seem purely practical, it does claim to
offer, like the utopian work, a permanent solution to the flux and flow of the ever changing
city. The plan is always intended to fix the usage of space; the aim the state regulation of
urban populations.
This would suggest that informality demands a critical analysis of traditional planning tools and
techniques.
Duminy’s (2011) comprehensive review of post-2000 planning and informality literature argues that
that the vast majority of planning authors propose that urban policy should be adjusted to better
accommodate the enormous variety of livelihood practices that characterise contemporary
urbanization. He quotes Jenkins:
The growing realisation that the ‘informal’ is here to stay has strengthened the position of
those who have argued that the informal is often as legitimate as the formal in urban
development. This has led to a growing interest and associated literature on the
8 Note these authors are not just concerned with the informal economy but also informal settlements and
service provision.
13
regularisation of informal settlements, integration of formal and informal systems and
‘coping’ with informality and illegality.
Numerous case studies can be found to demonstrate that planning may be implicated in both the
destruction of livelihoods as well as their progressive support. Within the past decade, the largest
and possibly most violent programme of African state repression against those living in informal
housing and pursuing informal livelihoods is Operation Murambatsvina9, which took place in
Zimbabwe in 2005. The UN Habitat mission to Zimbabwe estimated that some 700,000 people in
cities across the country lost either their homes, their source of livelihood or both (Tibaijuka 2005:7).
In explaining the events, many analysts have pointed to the fact that since 2000 the urban electorate
had voted overwhelming for the opposition – the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Since
Tibaijuka (2005) estimates that one in every five Zimbabweans were affected by Operation
Marumbatsvina, political affiliations, although important, can be only one part of the rationale
behind these actions. Potts (2007) places the blame for this intervention firmly at the feet of urban
planning traditions in the country. She details how colonial-type approaches to urban planning in
Zimbabwe have extended into the post-colonial period (see also Kamete 2007; 2009).
At the other end of the spectrum is the case of an urban renewal project in inner city Durban, South
Africa. Warwick Junction is the primary transport node in the city and on a busy day can
accommodate up to 8000 street traders. Dobson and Skinner’s (2009) detailed analysis of the
project demonstrates how planners and city officials, together with traders, spatially redesigned the
area providing a dramatically improved environment for commuters and infrastructure for many
different trader groups. Serious urban management concerns, including crime and cleaning, were
also addressed. This was made possible through a process of collaborative planning. The case proves
that inclusive approaches to the design, planning and management of public space for street traders
are possible.
Once the persistent reality of urban informal work is accepted, the critical question becomes one of
how best to ‘cope’ with these complex and nuanced activities. The rest of this discussion aims to
highlight important issues to consider in the process of accommodating and consolidating informal
urban livelihoods.
2.5. Economic debates: Formal – informal economy linkages and spatial
clustering
The issue of linkages between formal and informal economic systems remains a persistent theme in
the literature, particularly for economists working in the field (Davies and Thurlow 2010; Ngiba et al.
2009; Phillips 2011; Teltscher 1994). There are few informal operators who are not linked (either
through supply or demand networks) with the formal economy. As Peattie points out, ‘if we think
about the world in terms of a formal and informal sector we will be glossing over the linkages which
are critical for a working policy and which constitute the most difficult elements politically in policy
development’ (1987:858). Leading on from this, and further nuancing the industrial segmentation of
informal economies outlined previously, there is a trend to analyse the informal economy according
to a sectoral approach, as is commonly applied to the formal economy (see Chen and Carr 2002;
9 While Government translated this to mean ‘Operation Clean-up’, the more literal Shona translation of ‘murambatsvina’ is
‘getting rid of the filth’.
14
Chen, Jhabvala and Lund 2002). Each informal sector has unique economic dynamics, particularly in
terms of linkages with the formal economy, and therefore each requires specific types of supportive
planning responses.
In the last two decades, many analysts have used the ‘commodity chain’ or ‘value chain’ approach as
a means of understanding the ongoing spatial re-organisation of economic production and
consumption, and the relationships that link processes together in the formal sector (Kaplinsky 2005;
Porter 1996). Increasingly those working on policy-related research for the informal economy have
adopted this approach (e.g. Carr 2004; Carr et al. 2000; Lund and Nicholson 2003; McCormick and
Schmitz 2001; Phillips 2011)11. Value chain analysis seeks to explain the sequence of activities from
the initial conception of a product, to its final consumption. Researchers using this technique
construct value chain maps, which provide a visual framework to illustrate the impact of changes in
external policy at different points on the chain. This approach has been used to understand sectoral
dynamics and strategies for industrial upgrading in numerous segments of the formal economy
(Gereffi 1999; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994)12. McCormick and Schmitz (2001) argue that the
application of a value chain approach to informal economic analysis can show how different informal
workers and enterprises are positioned within local and global production and distribution systems,
thus allowing practitioners to identify ‘leverage points’ along the chain where intervention would be
most effective.
A good example of the application of this approach concerns the analysis of the traditional medicine
or muthi industry13 in KwaZulu Natal Province in South Africa (Institute for Natural Resources 2003;
Mander 1998). Mander (1998), for example, has analysed the industrial process linking plant
harvesting to final medicinal consumption. Informed by a dual concern of supporting both the
growth and sustainability of the industry, the analysis identified a number of potential points of
intervention. The first point concerns the need to train gatherers in sustainable harvesting
techniques. The second involves the use of state-owned land for plant cultivation. Thirdly, the study
identified the need to access new higher-end markets through improved packaging and marketing.
This led to the formulation of a public-private sector support programme for the industry.
Du Toit (2008) has made the point that persistent poverty within informal economies can stem not
only from a disconnect with formal economies, but also from adverse incorporation into the formal
systems. The special issue of the journal Development Southern Africa (volume 25, number 2)
highlights the diversity of ways in which the working poor may be connected, disconnected or
incorporated. (Other than du Toit see particularly Fisher 2008; Potts 2008; Tambulasia and Kayunia
2008).
11
There is limited analysis of segments of African informal economies using these techniques. This is a critical
area for further research. 12
The idea of a value chain was developed by Porter, M. 1990. The Competitive Advantage of Nations. New
York: Free Press. 13
This is a significant component of the informal economy in South Africa. The Institute for Natural Resources
(2003:7) estimates that R61 million of medicinal plant material is traded in the province of KwaZulu-Natal
annually. It is estimated that over 30 000 people work in the traditional medicine sector; most are rural
gatherers who are very poor.
15
The spatial clustering of informal economic activities is another important factor to consider in
planning processes, particularly in vibrant informal economies such as Emilia-Romagna in Italy,
where an economic advantage stems from informal firms being located in close proximity (Capecchi
1989). The promotion of small enterprise clusters is widely acknowledged to be an important means
of promoting competitive small firm development. Meagher (2007:473) points out that informal
enterprise clusters can generate novel forms of economic governance that enhance economic co-
operation, efficiency and innovation. The ways in which planners could facilitate this clustering in
African urban contexts, thereby promoting ‘informal economies of scale’, needs further exploration.
2.6. Political debates: The politics of informal workers - implications for
planners
Beall (2000) points out:
The processes of incorporation and exclusion of those working in the informal economy is
part of the everyday political struggle. The way in which informal workers are organised,
articulate their concerns and wield power is thus critical.
There has been a recent surge of interest in the politics of those working informally and a move
away from the assumption that informal workers lack agency. Bayat’s work in Iran (1993, 1997,
2000), and North African and Middle Eastern contexts (Bayat 2000), is important in this regard. He
argues that the emerging politics of informal actors is quite distinctive, suggesting that it constitutes
a ‘quiet encroachment of the ordinary’. He depicts these novel forms of political engagement as ‘a
silent, patient, protracted, and pervasive advancement of ordinary people on the propertied and
powerful in order to survive hardships and better their lives’ (1997:57). He explains,
Rural migrants encroach on cities and their amenities, refugees and international migrants
on host states and their provisions, squatters on public and private lands or ready-made
homes, and street vendors on businesses’ opportunity costs, as well as on public space in
both its physical and social facets – street pavements, intersections, public parks and the like
(1997:58).
Bayat ultimately argues that these actions are marked by ‘quiet, atomised and prolonged
mobilisation with episodic collective action’.
Lindell’s (2010) recent edited volume on collective agency, alliances and transnational organising in
Africa collates existing material but also adds significant new empirical insights to the issue of
informal worker organisation. The volume highlights the emergence of new organisations on the
continent, as well as the formation of institutional alliances between formal and informal worker
groups. The precise dynamics of these processes differ from place to place and in terms of their
scalar characteristics. National alliances of informal workers have arisen in countries such as Kenya
(Mitullah 2010), Tanzania and Zambia; yet we also find regional organisations like the Zambian
association of cross-border traders (Nchito and Transberg Hansen 2010). Furthermore, the 2002
launch of the international alliance of street trader organisations, or StreetNet, is an example of
emerging forms of regional and international collaboration (see www.streetnet.org).
From existing country and case-specific work (for example War on Want’s work on informal
economy organisations in Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia [2006]; Lindell [2009] on
Mozambican vendors associations; King [2006] on street traders in Kumasi; Nnkya [2006] on traders
in Dar es Salaam; Devenish and Skinner [2006] on the Self Employed Women’s Union) and sector-
16
specific work (see, for example, Samson’s [2010] analysis of trends in the organisation of African
waste pickers), it is difficult to discern a clear single pattern of organisation amongst informal
workers. Some organisations appear to wield significant political power (for example the women
market organisations in Cotonou, Benin, and the Zambian association of cross-border traders);
others less so (see, for example, Brown and Lyons’ [2010] study of the impact of trader associations
in Dar es Salaam, Dakar and Accra). What this empirical work does show however, is that although
Bayat’s ‘quiet encroachment of the ordinary’ might well be one form of politics among informal
workers, increasingly there appear to be other organisational forms and that are highly context-
specific.
Any study of the informal economy or practical work needs to be acutely aware of the nature of
organisation among informal workers – what organisations are there, who do they represent and,
equally importantly, who is excluded14? What are their strategies for securing advantages for their
members? In the relatively rare cases where informal workers have been incorporated into urban
plans, informal workers organisation has often been identified as a critical factor (see Dobson and
Skinner 2009; Nnkya 2006). The three sector profiles provided in this toolkit (Appendix A) conclude
with outlining organising trends amongst the sector groups.
Perhaps the most cited example of collective action amongst informal workers, resulting in securer
livelihoods, is the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India. With over 1 million
members, they are the largest union in India and present one of the most innovative forms of
organising (see www.sewa.org and Bhatt 2006; Chen 2004; Datta 2003; Rose 1992). Furthermore,
where waste pickers have been incorporated into municipal waste collection, their organisation into
co-operatives has again been an important driver of their political agency (Dias 2011; Medina 2007).
2.7. Planning practices and how they shape informal livelihoods
There are multiple ways in which planning affects and shapes the activities in the informal economy.
City-wide planning promoting the spatial segregation between rich and poor, with the poor
relegated to peripheral urban areas, drives the exclusion of informal actors. Transport planning can
also facilitate or hinder informal livelihood activities – depending on how planning connects poorer
areas to both business and industrial districts, as well as more affluent residential areas. A number of
key questions concerning the notion of ‘access’ pertain here. Can street traders access better-off
customers or formal workers in industrial areas? Do waste collectors have access to quantities of
lucrative recyclables generated by businesses? How much do informal construction workers have to
spend in order to reach curb-side pick-up points? Brown and Lloyd-Jones (2002) argue that cities
consisting of multiple business nodes, rather than a single central business district, tend to support
informal livelihoods to a greater extent.
Land use planning and zoning practices can also facilitate or hinder livelihoods. Do residential zoning
schemes accommodate the fact that homes are often used as places of both work and shelter? Does
a particular layout plan enable the poor to access land for the purposes of small-scale agriculture in
14
Much existing evidence for example suggests that women, although often dominant in numbers are seldom
found in leadership positions in informal worker organisations. Similarly migrants (both foreign and from rural
areas) are often excluded.
17
addition to housing? Transport nodes are important markets for informal traders – how much space
is available to accommodate these operators? Are they located in areas with high degrees of footfall
or do commuters have to go out of their way to access informally traded goods? Brown and Lloyd-
Jones (2002) argue that planning approaches accommodating mixed land uses, varieties of plot sizes,
and mixed tenure schemes have greater potential to support a variety of livelihoods than traditional
prescriptive spatial planning and zoning approaches.
Planning tools such as policy regulations and bylaws dictate whom has the right to operate in an
area, as well as the mode of operation permitted. Often health and safety and building regulations
are used to stop informal activities in urban areas, yet these policies are invariably based on the
urban cultural and economic norms of developed countries. Historian Bill Freund (2007:156) argues,
in his reflections on post-colonial African cities, that contemporary urban planning ordinances and
decrees often show little real variation from colonial patterns. In the case of Nairobi (Kenya),
Kamunyori (2007:10) points out that although street trading is legal according to the city bylaws, the
colonial era General Nuisance bylaw is commonly used to supersede this provision. The General
Nuisance bylaw allows city officials to arrest any individual that they deem to be ‘creating a “general
nuisance” in public spaces’. Many African municipal governments use policy measures to ban public
access to landfill sites. Waste collectors often still access these sites, but have to do so at night or by
bribing municipal officials.
Since residential spaces are increasingly becoming productive spaces in the form of home-based
enterprises, the provision of basic infrastructure and services (electricity, water and sanitation,
garbage removal, etc.) to living quarters is essential to promoting sustainable livelihood
development. Payment for these services (i.e. rates and service charges) is also an increasingly
important issue for urban policy – are flat rates charged, or are opportunities for cross-subsidization
being mobilised? Infrastructure provision for specific groups within the informal economy is also
important: small-scale manufacturers need spaces to work; street traders need shelter from the
elements and places to store their goods overnight, and so on.
The manner in which planning practices help or hinder the livelihood activities of the informal
economy is highly context-specific. Appropriate planning interventions will differ from one worker
group to another, and from one part of the city to another. By way of a general schematic, planning
analysis could start by segmenting the informal economy into different categories or worker groups,
before studying their spatial distribution within the city. The analysis can then turn to the modes by
which different worker groups are regulated by urban policies, as well as the potential impact of
spatial interventions on informal activities, ranging from city-wide master planning to micro-service
delivery and urban design.
2.8. Policy debate on regulation - too much, too little; what is ‘appropriate’?
Current policy debates over whether the informal economy should be ‘formalized’ are of direct
relevance to planners. Chen (2007), recognising the segmentations within the informal economy
discussed previously, points out that formalization has different meanings for different segments of
the informal economy. On one hand, the formalization of informal enterprises requires
bureaucracies that are willing and able to simplify registration requirements, introduce progressive
registration fees, and offer very small businesses the incentives and benefits that large formal
18
businesses receive. On the other, formalization of informal jobs requires the extension of legal and
social protection to informal workers and creation of more formal jobs. Chen points out that, in most
countries, registration requirements are cumbersome, transaction costs are high, and economic
policies and incentives are biased towards larger enterprises. Furthermore, in many countries,
formal employment growth is not keeping pace with employment demand, and employers are more
inclined to convert formal jobs into informal jobs, rather than the other way around.
In this context, Chen proposes a policy framework that seeks to:
• expand formal employment by putting employment creation and decent work at the centre
of macroeconomic policy;
• increase efforts to a) formalize informal enterprises by creating incentives and simplifying
procedures for entrepreneurs to register and b) formalize informal jobs by persuading
employers to provide more benefits and protections to their workers; and
• increase the returns to their investment of those who work in the informal economy by
increasing their assets and competitiveness and by assuring better terms and conditions of
work.
Activists have pointed to the importance of allowing those working in the informal economy to
participate in the design of appropriate planning regulations. The co-ordinator of the international
alliance of street trader organisations or StreetNet for example suggests ‘voice regulation’ referring
to regulation by negotiation, which entails the participation of interest groups in determining the
appropriate regulations (Horn 2000:1).
2.9. Urban planning processes
An issue that is frequently raised by activists concerns the extent to which informal workers are
involved in planning processes. StreetNet, for example, operates with campaign slogan ‘nothing for
us without us’. Are informal workers merely made aware of plans, are they consulted, or do they
genuinely participate in shaping planning interventions? Not all informal workers are part of
organisations. Those who are sometimes complain that their leaders are not accountable.
Furthermore, despite the fact that many informal workers are women, organisation leaders tend to
be men, with women’s specific concerns often sidelined. Foreign migrants are another stakeholder
group that might not be well represented in informal economy organisations. These dynamics make
the instigation of participatory planning processes difficult, an issue aggravated by the massive
diversity of actors and activities within the informal economy. Informal work is also particularly
mobile – workers tend to be ‘on the move’ to a greater extent than formal jobholders. The manner
in which they use space constantly changes. Close observation of curbside trading, for example,
reveals how different products are sold at different times of day. Some informal workers actively
seek official recognition, while others avoid it. This dynamism is, in part, what makes the informal
economy such an intriguing yet challenging phenomenon for planners.
In her classic article on citizen’s participation in planning processes, Arnstein (1969) used the
metaphor of a ‘ladder of participation’, with tokenism and manipulation at the lowest level, and full
and meaningful participation at the highest. In this view, full participation occurs where citizens
make decisions about local issues based on well-developed understandings of the issues at hand.
19
This relates to recent debates within the planning literature around ‘communicative’ or
‘collaborative’ planning approaches. Watson (2002:29) describes this process as follows:
Interaction (with stakeholders or interest groups), communicating ideas, forming arguments,
debating differences in understandings, and finally reaching consensus on a course of action
replace detached, expert-driven plan-making as the primary activity of planners.
Leonie Sandercock takes this one step further in planning in multicultural societies. Watson
(2002:32) summarises her position as follows
This diversity requires to be celebrated rather than repressed: that is, the claims of groups
need to be recognized and facilitated....The role of the planner in such a context is to link
knowledge to action to empower oppressed and marginalized groups, to resist exploitation
and the denial of their authenticity.
Although Sandercock is reflecting on northern contexts, this approach has resonance for planning
responses to the informal economy.
2.10. What constitutes a ‘modern African City’ and where do informal workers
fit in?
The manner in which we support and manage the informal economy is both representative and
constitutive of the ‘visions’ that we construct for our cities. Often there is a tension between the
desire to ‘modernise’ African cites and the necessity of accommodating ‘non-modern’ informal
activities. A planning educational course for urban informal economies could therefore finish by
revisiting the global / world cities debates to critically assess what these developmental discourses
mean for urban economic development planning, in general, and informal economic development
planning in particular.
There has been a longstanding interest in the role cities do and can play in global economic systems
(Beaverstock et al. 2002; Doel and Hubbard 2002; Sassen 1991). Many city governments and urban
growth coalitions aspire to reach something called ‘world city status’; to achieve some sort of
command over the global flows of increasingly ‘footloose’ forms of capital. The position and
functioning of cities in the world economy thus becomes the dominant factor in urban economic
development planning. The implicit policy prescription is that international capital investment
should be pursued above all else. Informal activities, in this paradigm, are seen as undesirable (as
obstacles to achieving ‘world class-ness’) and their contributions to local economies go largely
unrecognised. Jennifer Robinson argues that the notion of the ‘world class city’ as a narrow policy
goal imposes ‘substantial limitations on imagining or planning the futures of cities’ (2002:531).
Simone presents an alternative view. He estimates that ‘roughly 75 percent of basic needs are
provided informally in the majority of African cities and that processes of informalisation are
expanding across discrete sectors and domains of urban life’ (2004:6). Rather than characterising
this state of affairs as dysfunctional, he argues that Africans have long made lives ‘that work’. In
discussing previous studies of informal economic activities, he suggests that ‘these studies have not
examined the ways in which such economies and activities themselves might act as a platform for
the creation of a very different kind of sustainable urban configuration than we have yet generally to
know’ (2004:9). His detailed case studies discuss the histories, macro-economic contexts and policy
frameworks that have driven the widespread ‘informalisation’ of everyday life in African cities, but
he focuses more particularly how African urban residents cope with these changes and pressures. In
20
essence, his work suggests that any serious attempt to reduce inequality in African urban centres
must acknowledge the contemporary influence of specific urban histories, and should incorporate
the existing local knowledge embedded in informal urban practices that sustain and reproduce
urban life.
(Optional extra) Further strategies for support – financial services, training and
social protection
Most authors and commentators agree that support services for informal economic activities, such
as microfinance and training programmes, are important interventions for promoting sustainable
urban livelihoods. Yet there is disagreement over the appropriate scope of coverage and manner of
delivery. Some argue for these services to be delivered on a cost-recovery and commercial basis;
others hold that this approach will only exclude and marginalize poorer operators. Morduch (2000)
provides a succinct overview of the debate over microfinance services for informal economies. Since
facilitating credit access utilizes peoples’ capacity to save negatively, should financial assistance be
limited to credit access or extended to include financial services that allow operators to save? The
case of the Self Employed Women’s Union bank in India demonstrates the possibility of providing a
range of financial services to very poor informal operators (see www.sewa.org). What about social
protection measures in times of crisis? Business skills training is also considered to be an important
realm of intervention that can lead to the development of more secure livelihoods. What
substantive issues should be covered in training programmes and how can this be best delivered?15
15
The International Labour Organisation is very active in the training field and their website a useful source of
information.
21
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